The EPA was in court on Friday to defend against its decision to delay implementation of federal regulations that aim to prevent this type of disaster

A fire burns at the Tri-Chem Industries plan in Cresson, Texas on Thursday March 15, 2018. (Photo: KDFW/screenshot)

While the Trump administration continues its push to stymie and roll back federal regulations by fighting in court to uphold a delay of the Chemical Disaster Rule, hazardous materials crews are searching for a worker presumed dead after an explosion at a Texas chemical plant.

Two other workers were injured Thursday in the blast at the Tri-Chem Industries plant in Cresson, which is about 50 miles southwest of Dallas. Efforts to battle the blaze were temporarily halted by concerns about exposure to toxic fumes and the subsequent explosions. Continue reading →

“This is an alarming proposal which raises the possibility that armed federal agents will be patrolling neighborhood precincts and vote centers,” over a dozen secretaries of state tell Senate leaders.

Civil rights advocates and secretaries of states are warning against a provision in a DHS reauthorization bill that would let the president dispatch Secret Service to polling places. (Photo: Penn State/flickr/cc)

Civil rights advocates and top election officials are expressing alarm over a section in the Department of Homeland Security reauthorization bill that would allow the president to send Secret Service agents to polling places.

“Who in their right mind would give this vulgar talking yam this kind of power?” quipped Charles P. Pierce at Esquire. Continue reading →

“Voters have seen this movie before. It didn’t work out in 2008 and it’s no wiser today. There is simply no excuse for a Democrat to add their name to Wall Street deregulation.”

Senators Tim Kaine and Angus King. Both senators were among the seventeen Democratic caucus members who voted in favor of a financial dergulation bill on Tuesday. “This bill wouldn’t be on the path to becoming law without the support of these Democrats,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) following the vote. Photo: flickr

While some have called the West Virginia teachers’ strike “the most important story in the country right now,” MSNBC and other outlets have almost completely ignored it.

As the demonstrations raged on in the state capitol, West Virginia lawmakers voted against bringing a teacher pay raise bill to the Senate floor for immediate consideration, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported on Friday. (Photo: Jacobin/Twitter)

In addition to being called out on his “plutocratic BS,” students in attendance attacked the Treasury chief’s record of foreclosing on tens of thousands of Americans

After a short lecture, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke with Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations in Los Angeles. (Photo: UCLA)

Trump Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin isn’t accustomed to facing direct challenges to his wild economic claims or protests over the GOP tax plan he helped craft, and after experiencing both during an event at UCLA’s Burkle Center on Monday, Mnuchin demanded that video of his appearance be suppressed.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mnuchin complained to the audience that he usually only talks to “people who wanna listen to me speak” after students and others attending the event yelled out “I think you’re full of shit” and denounced the Republican tax bill as an attack on “people who are in poverty.” Continue reading →

“You mean corporations aren’t using the bulk of their tax cuts to create jobs and boost workers’ wages like Trump promised? Weird…”

Almost everyone—nonpartisan commentators, economists, and even President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser—predicted that corporate shareholders and CEOs, not workers, would be the primary beneficiaries of the Republican tax law, and several recent analyses have shown that prediction to be right on the money.

While many corporations immediately launched aggressive PR campaigns crediting the tax plan Trump signed in December with new “investments” in employees, a study by the nonprofit group JUST Capital published on Wednesday found that the sensational headlines touting worker bonuses obscured the fact that the vast majority of the law’s benefits have gone straight to the pockets of wealthy shareholders. Continue reading →

The 5-3 ruling tosses out a 2015 lower court decision that stated immigrant detainees are entitled to a bond hearing every six months. The Obama administration appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, and the Trump administration continued the case. Continue reading →

The Census Bureau is scrambling to respond to a last-minute request by the Justice Department to add a question on citizenship status to the 2020 census, according to hundreds of pages of emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The emails show that the DOJ’s December request set off a flurry of activity in the bureau as career Census officials hurried to research the history of how citizenship has been handled in past surveys, raced to come up with alternatives to the DOJ request and vented their frustration over public outrage on the issue. Continue reading →

Journalists on social media pushed back on Friday against NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch’s claim that the news media “loves” mass shootings because they deliver ratings boosts.

This rhetoric is dangerous, and continues the assault on journalists in an effort to paint them as subhuman. Of the thousands of people I know, including hundreds of journalists, I know zero (ZERO) people subhuman enough to “love mass shootings” https://t.co/wBo8y5DPYz

“Many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it,” Loesch said Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), addressing reporters in the back of the room. “Now I’m not saying that you love the tragedy. But I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media.”

Loesch’s comments echoed those made in a video released this week by the NRA, in which gun rights activist Colion Noir argued, “If there’s one organization in this country that has a vested interest in the perpetuation of mass tragedy, it’s the mainstream media.”

The former Blaze host doubled-down on her comments in a Friday morning interview on CNN with Alisyn Camerota, who told her, “You’re wrong on every single level,” and argued against her claim that shootings provide a ratings boost for news programs.

“Americans have reached saturation level,” said Camerota. “They’re so sick of it and it’s so heartbreaking that they actually often turn away.”

Alisyn Camerota to NRA spokeswoman: “You think we love mass shootings? … It’s just malicious, actually, that you would say that. I don’t know anybody in the media who likes mass shootings… We pray that there’s never another one.” https://t.co/qzE1DxoncOhttps://t.co/a0QY03VTYU

Many in the news media have pushed to refine how news stations cover mass shootings, urging journalists to focus less on the perpetrators of attacks. Much of the ongoing coverage of the shooting in Parkland, Florida last week has focused on efforts by survivors to achieve gun control legislation in order to prevent more shootings—a push that is strongly opposed by the NRA.

On social media, many reporters reminded Loesch and her supporters that journalists are members of their communities whose families are put at as much risk as any other American household by the prevalence of military-style semi-automatic firearms like the AR-15.

This an unequivocally horrifying thing to say. Journalists are humans, not story-pursuing robots salivating for the death of young kids. We don’t “love mass shootings.” Many of us have kids of our own. I’m floored by this. https://t.co/HmDU6G4NhG

This is a disgusting insult to journalists everywhere. NOBODY loves mass shootings. We cry and grieve and fear for our kids just like anyone else. And guess what? Our families are victims of tragedies, too. Do people believe this garbage??? https://t.co/DHNKA5gLRm

Dana Loesch’s comments are so disingenuous and gross. If you really believe journalists enjoy covering mass shootings, especially those involving innocent children and teens, you should hang out at any newsroom and try to do our job for just a day.https://t.co/cCx4OPxXeF

As Catherine Woodiwiss wrote at Sojourners last July, reporters’ prolonged exposure to violent and traumatic events including shootings can correspond with high levels of distress:

In 2014, a study of “frequent and prolonged exposure to deeply disturbing images” published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine found that the frequency with which a journalist watches violent content correlates with the journalist’s likelihood of having anxiety, depression, PTSD, or alcoholism.

The Radio Television Digital News Association also released a statement about the NRA’s new talking point.

“We are your neighbors. Your friends. We attend the same houses of worship. We go the same classes at the gym. Our children are in the same classes at school…We are deeply affected by tragedy. We are journalists and we do what we do because you have a need to know and understand the world around you.”

You might have also noticed that both the Loesch speech and Pai’s award happened at CPAC. We’ll be summarizing what happened at CPAC sometime in the next few days; the sheer insanity exhibited there was both amusing and frightening.